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Post by Jason Parris on Sept 12, 2013 22:43:45 GMT
Explore the way in which Carver uses the notion of ritual in "Cathedral." As you explore his treatment of this particular idea, make sure that you connect it to the meaning/effect of the story as a whole.
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amychen
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“But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go—we’ll eat you up—we love you so!”
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Post by amychen on Sept 14, 2013 10:31:59 GMT
To aid with the discussion and my own response to this prompt, here is a list of the rituals I've found in Carver's "Cathedral": 1. The tapes between Robert and the narrator's wife. 2. The wife's poems. 3. Smoking dope and staying up late. 4. This kind of story (I will explain). 
Rituals serve more as a documentation of who we are, proof that we exist. Each of the characters appears to have a ritual in Carver's "Cathedral." The wife writes poems in an attempt to document situations such as Robert touching her face, the narrator smokes dope and stays up as late as possible every night for reasons that I lack the experience to understand, and the wife and the blind man share the ritual of sending tapes back and forth, both using the tapes as a way to document their lives. Robert, however, appears to have less of an obsession with ritual than the others, leaving him seemingly significantly more content than the others. This is shown when he agrees to smoke with the narrator (and thus share the ritual of smoking with him), and in response to the narrator's wife's surprise, responds "'...there's always a first time for everything'" (Carver 104). This response emphasizes on how open his is towards change and the practices of others. As I noted in my other post Robert is also a less shallow character than the others. He focuses on the world, rather than focusing on himself and how others compare with him (unlike the narrator, who focuses on Beulah's "colored name" and Robert's blindness). This is promoted by Carver as a way to find contentment, as the blind man, upon being told to "make [himself] comfortable" states, "'I am comfortable'" (Carver 104), indicating that he is content, seemingly because he is not pre-occupied with what could make him more comfortable. It is therefore ironic that this kind of story is itself a kind of ritual. It follows the classic pattern of the "people can change, especially racists" plot. This is not to say that this is good or bad, but simply to say that this book serves as a kind of reinforcement of the individual, extending the repeated message found through literature that we either (1) are already good people and should give ourselves a pat on the back for being so understanding of the feelings of others or (2) that we have the capacity to change into better people. This elaborates my interpretation on the story, creating a middle ground between contentment and ego: contentment through selflessness as described by the blind man's outlook is something to strive for, but personally not something that is always necessary or even something one should want all the time. After all, contentment--- Palahnuik's "perpetual happiness"---lacks the highs and lows of living. We all have our moments of selflessness and selfishness---even Robert, the blind man---and that's perfectly okay. |
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Post by hannahlewman on Sept 14, 2013 19:19:06 GMT
Rituals are a form of comfort. They protect us from the danger of the unexpected. Like most comfortable things (Pajama Jeans, La-Z Boy chairs, etc), rituals come with an overwhelmingly negative side effect: they make us numb and keep us from finding new and exhilarating experiences.
The comfort of rituals make us blind to the change occurring around us, which is why it is ironic the Robert, the blind man, is the only one who doesn't partake in them. Despite being blind, Robert can see the world more clearly than his visually-able counter parts because he does not let himself become so comfortable that he takes the world around him for granted. The narrator has grown so comfortable with his ritual of staying up late and smoking that he no longer sees beauty in his monotonous, ritual-filled life. It is as if he exists simply to complete his rituals, not to see new things even when they are presented to him, as is the case with the cathedrals on tv. When failing to describe the cathedral, he states, "...it looks like that's the best I can do for you. I'm just no good at it"(Carver 107). Even though he can see the cathedral, he can't SEE the cathedral, because ritual has made him blind. It is not until the blind man, who is not numbed by ritual, helps the narrator "see" the cathedral that he truly understands what he has been missing. Even though the narrator keeps his eyes closed, he says that the cathedral he and the blind man drew together is "really something"(Carver 108). This shows that it does not take vision to see something, it takes effort and curiosity, two things that are killed by the comfort of ritual.
Ritual is a force so strong it can make those with vision more blind than a man whose eyes do not work. It is the enemy of curiosity and the first step in becoming too comfortable. The world isn't about what you see, it is about how you see it and how much you appreciate what is around you.
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Post by stever on Sept 14, 2013 19:57:50 GMT
I think you make a very interesting point about the danger of rituals, Hannah. I am going to "dance with" your comment a bit though because I do not believe the story depicts all rituals as negative.
I do agree that the narrator is set in his ways and jaded because of the frequent rituals he partakes in. He always rides on the same side of the train, eats, drinks, smokes, watches television, etc. He rarely strays from his ritualistic behavior and is not open to change because of this.
Robert and the narrator's wife partake in different types of rituals, however. They send audiotapes back and forth to each other -- a ritual that brings the two of them closer together and is not destructive. The narrator's wife also writes poems ritualistically -- this surely cannot be destructive; she is creating art and expressing emotion.
There is a fundamental difference between these two types of rituals, however, which might be a more striking dichotomy than the one between ritual and willingness to change. The narrator's rituals all involve consumption, whereas Robert's and the narrator's wife's rituals involve creation.
Carver depicts creation as a very positive force in the novel. The creation of art (the drawing of the Cathedral) helps the narrator "see" and empathize more with Robert and the creation of the audiotapes bring Roberts and the narrator's wife closer together.
It makes sense that consumption, the opposite of creation, would be seen as a negative force. Consumption gives people less reason to create for they can consume what they could create themselves. Perhaps the fact that Robert cannot consume sensory stimuli gives him greater reason to create.
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joelk
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Post by joelk on Sept 15, 2013 0:00:03 GMT
I agree with many of the points in this thread, but I’d like to pirouette in and point out that perhaps we are giving rituals an unfairly bad reputation.
Hannah and Steve point out the harmful complacency that rituals can instill in whomever carries them out. But have we examined what happens when we share rituals? The positive examples present in “Cathedral” lead me to believe that rituals are not nearly as negative as they initially appear—even the rituals involving consumption.
Let’s start, however, with the ritual that seems to hold the most positive connotation: the tapes that Robert and the wife send back and forth. When Robert’s wife shares the tapes with him, he explains, “After a few minutes of harmless chitchat, I hear my own name in the mouth of this stranger, this blind man I didn’t even know! And then this: ‘From all you’ve said about him, I can only conclude—‘ But we were interrupted…maybe it was just as well. I’d heard all I wanted to” (100). By sharing the tapes, the wife gives the narrator a better understanding of the man she communicates so frequently with, a man that the narrator knows so little about that he uses an exclamation mark when discussing his lack of knowledge. Also, although it may be unsuccessful, sharing the tapes offers the narrator an opportunity to move past his shallow definition of Robert as “this blind man” and learn about him as a person. Furthermore, while “I’d heard all I wanted to” is quite nebulous—did the narrator not care? Was he disparaging the “harmless chitchat” as boring? Or was he afraid of what Robert said about him?—at some level, I think it is safe to assume that this instance satisfied some of the narrator’s curiosity about the tapes and taught him more about his wife. And, if the narrator was more open-minded, the benefits of sharing the tapes with him might have been even greater.
Similarly to the tapes, it appears that the sharing of wife’s poems—also, perhaps, a more positive ritual—serve a similar purpose: the narrator learns more about his wife through them. When the wife shares one of her poems, he explains “I didn’t think much of the poem. Of course, I didn’t tell her that” (100). While the narrator does not appreciate the poem (or poems in general, as he later tells) he still learns more about his wife through this ritual. After all, the wife “wrote a poem or two every year, usually after something really important had happened to her” (99). Thus, it can be safely assumed that by reading the poem, the narrator learned about what his wife found important, even if the poetry itself was mediocre.
Now, my examination of the consumption rituals hinges on one fundamental assumption: the narrator grows to feel less unnerved by Robert’s blindness the more the narrator can relate to Robert’s actions. After all, the narrator blatantly states, “I’d never met, or personally known, anyone who was blind…[Robert] didn’t wear dark glasses…At first glance, his eyes looked like anyone else’s eyes. But if you looked close, there was…too much white in the iris…and the pupils seemed to move around in the sockets without his knowing or being able to stop it. Creepy” (102). The narrator seems scared of Robert and his eyes simply because he has never seen such sights before. Thus, it seems that the narrator feels anything he doesn’t already see as “normal” is sinister or weird, meaning that for him to slowly accept Robert, Robert must create more of a “normal” impression.
So, even the more “negative” rituals, as Steve might call them, seem to provide the same benefits of gaining an understanding of another person, when one shares the ritual. Although Robert has never smoked dope before, he accepts the narrator’s offer to do so. Soon, as the narrator relates it, Robert smokes “like he’d been doing it since he was nine years old” (105). The fact that Robert quickly adapts to the narrator’s own ritual leads the narrator to admit, at some level, that Robert is more like him than Robert is different. Similarly, a more direct “consumption” ritual illustrates the same: that of eating. While eating isn’t always a ritual, the amount of words the narrator devotes to explaining the dinner suggests that this meal was of ritual importance. As the narrator tells, “We dug in. We ate everything there was to eat on the table. We ate like there was no tomorrow…We scarfed. We grazed that table. We were into serious eating. The blind man had right away located his foods, he knew just where everything was on his plate. I watched with admiration as he used his knife and fork on the meat” (103). The first thing to note is the repetitive use of the collective “we” pronoun. Clearly, during the smorgasbord, the narrator sees his wife, Robert, and himself as equals, simply because Robert is partaking in his “ritual” style of binge feasting. Secondly, even when the narrator digresses from “we” and analyzes Robert’s actions, he feels “admiration,” and not put off, by the fact that Robert can do what he himself is able to do, even though he may be blind. Thus, it seems that both smoking and eating are also rituals that, when shared, allow the narrator to relate to Robert, a man he otherwise wouldn’t relate to.
Finally, I also think that the drawing is itself a ritual, and, once again, a ritual that has positive effects when one shares it. When the narrator fails to accurately describe a cathedral, Robert says, “Hey, listen to me. Will you do me a favor? I got an idea. Why don’t you find us some heavy paper? And a pen. We’ll do something. We’ll draw one together” (107). The fact that Robert has been blind for many years, and the fact that this is an unusual request, suggests, in my mind, that Robert has had people draw things for him before. In other words, drawing objects is one of Robert’s own rituals. Of course, once they’ve begun drawing, the narrator explains, “His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now” (108). One can assume that the ritual of drawing is the final action that leads the narrator to discard his xenophobic perceptions of blind people. Thus, by sharing his drawing ritual, Robert finally gains the narrator’s acceptance.
Rituals, when done alone, may have varying benefits or harms, but because rituals, as Amy put it, “document who we are,” sharing rituals allows the characters of Carver’s story gain deeper understandings of and appreciations for each other. In turn, that suggests that to truly get to know someone or overcome a prejudice, one may have to be willing to share one’s own or partake in another’s ritual, as ritual actions allow people to relate to each other and reveal, at a level apparently deeper than words, the type of person that someone is.
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Post by abbylyons on Sept 15, 2013 2:33:08 GMT
A key focus of this short story is two men who lack a connection and try to find one. Carver uses rituals to emphasize the depth of the initial disconnect between the two men, who are coming from different worlds to meet each other for the first time. Both Robert and the narrator attempt to alleviate the stress by engaging in ritualistic behavior to excess. As he tries to make conversation, Robert smokes cigarettes one after another, causing the butts to overflow his ashtray. The narrator serves round after round of alcoholic beverages to dull the feeling of awkwardness. While the group is in the living room, the narrator’s wife sits between the two men to facilitate conversation; however, when they move to the dinner table, the two men need to sit at the same table. They avoid talking to each other by keeping their mouths full until every scrap of food on the table is gone. After dinner, the narrator turns on the TV to fill the silence. Smoking, drinking, eating, and TV watching are all common everyday rituals that are part of life, but during this encounter they dominate the scene. The author makes it clear that Robert and the narrator are both exceedingly uncomfortable and have retreated into the security of ritual. At this point, it seems that the encounter will end without the two men ever making a connection. But then Robert is inspired to break out of the rituals and take on the task of drawing an archetypal cathedral with the narrator. By the time the drawing is complete, they have made a connection. Perhaps the author’s message is that some social rituals can allow people to remain comfortably isolated from others. By breaking out of rituals, people can find more opportunities to make new connections.
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Post by allegra on Sept 15, 2013 16:18:34 GMT
Rituals, to me, serve as a sort of stuck-in-quicksand approach to life. I hate rituals, and so does the narrator. He obviously attempts to stray from ritualistic behavior, but his attempt leads him to form other rituals such as smoking every night. Rituals are a part of society. People wake up, go to work, eat food at almost the same time of day. As much as I hate rituals, I can't deny that they exist and that I follow some of these ritualistic patterns as well. However, because the narrator doesn't want to create more transparent rituals for himself like his wife does, he gets stuck in his own rut; his own way of thinking. When I was in 7th grade I read a book called Everlost by Neal Shusterman. In this book, the characters (ghosts) could easily fall into a rhythm of doing the same thing every day, forgetting about everything else and their desire to be set free. Similarly, the narrator's rhythm is preventing him from being more open-minded. In real-life, some rituals are bad and some are good, and it is in human nature for people to fall into habitual rituals. As long as your own personal rituals don't close your mind to better ways of thinking, those rituals can and will exist.
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Post by juliamoreland on Sept 15, 2013 16:49:00 GMT
After reading previous comments, I am feeling like taking a different approach rather than trying to figure if rituals are negative or positive. I noticed the ritual of the narrator smoking especially, his same routine, night after night. "Every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep. My wife and I hardly ever went to bed at the same time" (105). Although routine and rituals allow for predictability, the comfort of ritual fades away over time. The narrator’s dreams begin to haunt him, and he comes to realize how lonely he is. This is the sadness of ritual and the "negative" side. Once Robert joins him, the same ritual is shifted, and then broken down all together. That is what I find the most meaningful in the story. How the destruction of a ritual gives the narrator something to live for. The unexpected makes life worth living.
Allegra, I was also obsessed with that book in seventh grade. If I remember correctly, the narrator falls in and out of times when she is overtaken by the same routine and rituals? She finds love, however, once she breaks out of her ritual. I realize this is making rituals sound negative, which I don’t think they are, because rituals do provide a form of comfort when everything else in life is chaotic. It is a balance; I think you were saying this Allegra, between relying on the comfort and safety those rituals provide and then experiencing life and finding new and exciting things. My favorite line from the short story is when the narrator says, "I put in windows with arches. I drew flying buttresses. I hung great doors. I couldn't stop. The TV station went off the air. I put down the pen and closed and opened my fingers. The blind man felt around over the paper. He moved the tips of his fingers over the paper, all over what I had drawn, and he nodded" (107). The passion and excitement that I feel from this bond just makes me happy. Knowing that each man has broken out of his safety net of ritual, and stepped into the world of the unknown is amazing.
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Post by emilybrinkmann on Sept 15, 2013 19:54:04 GMT
Human being are creatures of habit. Having habits is not a bad thing (most of the time) just something to ponder why we do what we do. I agree with Abby in that they add depth to the character's. I felt like I understood Robert to some extent before he even stepped out of the car because of the narrators thoughts on the videos passed between Robert and his wife. We don't understand everything we do and why, just something draws us to that. With Robert it is recording his life through the video tapes and sharing them with the wife. I believe this helps him feel like he has a connection with the outside world. And that he will have a "legacy" or something to be remembered by, I believe that this is also the reason the wife shares in this ritual. Though she also writes poetry every year of the events in her life. The characters seem to be very disconnected from themselves and the one thing that guides them are these rituals that the can't even understand. It is a common thread among them. Going off what Hannah said, that rituals guide us, I believe they are the things we can count on most. The wife contacted Robert when she was unhappy in her first marriage, and now she continues it for the purpose of comfort and security (documenting her life). In the same way, the husband smokes pot to escape from something even through he doesn't know what it is. They all use them as a crutch, just as every person does to get through their everyday lives.
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alice
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Post by alice on Sept 15, 2013 20:37:49 GMT
I think one thing that has been vaguely mentioned by Abby is that these men are both very uncomfortable because they are out of their ritual. The narrator is initially frustrated by this stranger of a blind man in his house because it breaks his rituals of 1) not having strangers or people in his house (his wife even notes he doesn't have friends) and 2) assisting, let alone knowing or dealing with a blind man.
Regarding the first ritual, his wife makes it clear that bringing someone (especially a friend) over to their house is rare when she says, "But if you had a friend, any friend, and the friend came to visit, I'd make him feel comfortable" (Carver 2) implying that no one ever has friends over in their home, making it a set ritual to keep their house to be just them. The wife, making and keeping a friend even after moving so many times, changes up this ritual by inviting and bringing the blind man to stay over. The narrator is initially uncomfortable with this stranger in this change of ritual as shown with their desperate use of drinks, cigarettes, and food as Abby mentioned.
The second ritual, a bit more of a stretch, lies in the way the narrator has gotten used to dealing with people. Like mentioned before, he doesn't have friends, let alone blind friends, so the way he is used to interacting with anyone, especially a group he has stereotyped with special treatment that he anticipated having to deal with and even further amend his people ritual with. He even holds expectations for him saying, "I'd always thought dark glasses were a must for the blind. Fact was, I wished he had a pair" (Carver 4). In his mind, blind people must follow the ritual of dressing like a stereotypical blind person. Robert broke that and the narrator was then very thrown off of his ritual of socializing and accepting/anticipating people.
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Post by sheridanf on Sept 15, 2013 23:08:24 GMT
Both in the world of "Cathedral" and the real world, rituals allow us to make connections. For example, in the real world, people can form relationships off of mutual interests (or rituals) or can judge someone based off of a certain ritual they partake in. The fact also holds true in "Cathedral." At the end of the story, the blind man and the narrator are able to connect by sharing in the ritual of drawing. Their connection in that moment becomes so strong that the narrator even kept his eyes closed to feel what the blind man must feel- and together they share in blindness.
In "Cathedral," rituals also can create walls between characters. When the blind man first comes to the narrator's house, the narrator can't seem to get into much conversation because he does not share the same rituals that the blind man and the wife share. In fact, when he tries sharing in it (by listening to one of the tapes), he is interrupted and he only gets to hear a few minutes of "harmless chitchat" (pg. 100). Strangely enough, out of the three (the narrator, the wife, and the blind man) it is the narrator that is the "weird one," not the blind man, as one might expect. One of the points brought up in this story was the superficiality of the narrator. It is this superficiality, highlighted by inability to share in the same rituals as his wife and the blind man, that makes him different. |
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Post by garygates on Sept 15, 2013 23:30:49 GMT
Carver seems to take commonplace events in American households and show how we have taken what could be positive and meaningful events, but have made them into routine rituals without real purpose.
The first such ritual that Carver writes about is prayer before dinner. Carver describes the dinner setting from the viewpoint of the narrator, "I swallowed some of my drink. 'Now let us pray,' I said, and the blind man lowered his head. My wife looked at me, her mouth agape. 'Pray the phone won't ring and the food doesn't get cold'" (Carver 103). There are two particularly noticeable things about this passage. The first is the way the narrator's wife looks at him, 'her mouth agape' when he comments that it is time for prayer. I interpreted from this passage that his wife is surprised because the two do not often pray before dinnertime. What seems like it has the potential to be a meaningful prayer, however, soon turns into almost a mockery of the ritual. Although it is not a common routine at the narrator's household, he approaches prayer like a completely insignificant event, yet takes the time to perform the prayer. The narrator's mocking of these customs shows the author's stance on the potential that a prayer has to be meaningful and inspiring, but the inappropriate way we have taken meaning out of this ritual.
As the narrator's attitude develops in the novel, so do the rituals performed in his household. The next routine ritual, which seems to have become a ritual in houses all over America today, is ‘the watching of the television’ (I only added quotes to make it seem more ominous, and I like the ring to it). The narrator begins by watching news and sports on television and when he later finds there to be nothing else on TV he watches a show about the Middle Ages and religion. When the narrator starts describing a cathedral to Robert both become more interested in their conversation. Robert asks the narrator to draw the cathedral while he holds the narrator’s hand, letting the art speak for the narrator who is struggling to explain more characteristics about the cathedral. Robert tells the narrator to close his eyes and continue drawing and the author becomes enraptured in a serene state: “My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything” (Carver 108). This common event, watching television, turned form a purposeless and lazy ritual into a unique and amazing experience. Carver shows us that we just have to open our eyes – or sometimes just close them – to make something great. The potential exists for purpose in everything we do. If we choose to lazily sit back we will inevitable miss the possibility of amazement, but if we curiously search and try to find purpose in every-day life events we can have amazing and life-altering experiences.
The one final motif that I found in Carver’s writing and that I think really wraps my comment up is the imagery of religion. Carver uses religious imagery, like the prayer and the cathedral, not to tell us that we need to strictly abide to a religion but that it is important to approach life in the zealous manner that the extremely religious follow their religion: with wonder, awe, and purpose. If we can do this we can too like the narrator have an enlightenment or sort of religious awakening in our ordinary lives.
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Post by pjharris on Sept 16, 2013 0:19:01 GMT
Big thanks to Bill for posting the story on facebook! With that said, my quotes are from a word document (left the book at school  ) and do not have accurate page numbers so, excuse my citation inaccuracy please. I enjoy the analysis of the idea that static rituals can be bad and can blind, but I would like to comment on how rituals can create and transcend ourselves through time. As I read there was one particular comment that stuck out to me; in fact it jumped out and struck me in the head as if to say, "Coulda' had a V8" and elicited an audible "Woooooooooaaaah" from myself. This poignant yet simple quote is thus, "The men who began their life's work on them, they never lived to see the completion of their work. In that wise, bub, they're no different from the rest of us, right?" (Carver, Pg. 8 of word document). Our little rituals can be meaningless. You can smoke pot and be a bit of a grouch and the only thing that may ever come of it is one day, perhaps, your grandchildren may get a laugh out of the fact that their grandpap used to be a pot head. There lies the damage of a static ritual. It hardly contributes to anything, if at all. But rituals like the wife's, with her poems, can be found by a relative mourning your loss ages later and can be inspired by your work and it may in fact change their lives. It can inspire people to do greater things even if you're dead and gone. Cathedrals, while beautiful and unique, can be ritualistic. They are all constructed in a like fashion and physically and mathematically comparable way. The narrator uses commonalities to describe them all in general instead of just one specific construct, "They reach way up. Up and up. Toward the sky. They're so big, some of them, they have to have these supports. To help hold them up, so to speak. These supports are called buttresses. They remind me of viaducts, for some reason. But maybe you don't know viaducts, either? Sometimes the cathedrals have devils and such carved into the front. Sometimes lords and ladies" (pg. 9 of word document). And in this way, they are a ritualistic building. Some could say that it is static and by making them all similar means that they aren't unique enough to contribute to much else than shelter to those who are seeing them, as the narrator does at first, but not really "seeing" them, as the narrator comes to do so. But even though these people, creating something so beautifully fixed, are dead, those that started the project and those that ended it, their work has lasted as a constant source of inspiration to the world and even to a grumpy old pot head and his strange guest; it has brought them together in a way that they never fore sought. This ritual has contributed to the world. Proving that the right kind of rituals are constructive and can be larger and last longer than yourself. And who knows, maybe most of us will never see how our rituals can be good because they have out lived us. |
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Post by jamiezimmerman on Sept 16, 2013 0:36:46 GMT
I'd like to start by establishing that ritual and comfort are, in essence, the same thing, or if not, then at least interchangeable enough that I am still understand when I use one or the other. A really sweet moment occurs when after the trio turn on the television, the wife says, "Robert, you make yourself comfortable" (104). Robert remarks that he is, but the wife repeats, "I want you to feel comfortable in this house", to which Robert laconically replies again that he is. Just prior to this discussion, the three have been talking about their lives. The narrator notes, "Robert had done a little of everything, it seemed, a regular blind jack-of-all-trades. but most recently he and his wife had had an Amway distributorship, from which, I gathered, they'd earned their living... [He] was also a ham radio operator. he talked in his loud voice about conversations he'd had with fellow operators in Guam, in the Philippines, in Alaska, even in Tahiti. He said he'd have a lot of friends there if he ever wanted to go visit those places" (103). The narrator's own boring and habitual life is placed in perspective next to Robert's broad experiences. The narrator has spent three years at a job that he doesn't like but won't do anything about. By contrast, Robert has seen much more of the world even though he is blind.
Robert's ritual is to travel. He talks with people all over the world, occasionally visiting them, befriend people everywhere, making himself comfortable even when he isn't home or surrounded by family. I think that his visit to the narrator's home is completely banal for him - another stop on his drift across the world. And I think that is why he answers so simply when the wife asks him more than once to get comfortable. Robert already is! He thinks she is asking if he is doing what he finds habitual. She has her own idea about what is "comfortable" - stationary and static, while his version is broad and far-reaching.
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Post by coreybrown on Sept 16, 2013 0:48:29 GMT
As many have pointed out in the replies before, there are (at least) two different "kinds" of rituals. Instead of "positive" and "negative" language that has been used previously, I'd like to think of them as rituals that mark the passage of time and those that and those that allow time to pass.
Rituals like the tape exchange and the wife's poems fall into the category of those that mark the passage of time as they allow the characters to reflect on a large stretch of time, recall everything that happened, and share it. The poems and tapes both provide an easy way to see everything important that occurred in that period of time and to document it. The tapes also provide something to look forward to as either participant in the ritual waits for the eventual reply. These kinds of rituals (like holidays, family reunions, and seasonal festivities) offer both hope for the future as well as focus on the "headlines" that occurred since the last version of this event and to gloss over the monotony that may have existed in between.
The everyday rituals like the narrator's drinking, smoking, eating, watching tv, etc simply allow time to pass. They may have begun as a way to cope with the monotony of life, but they simply add to it. For the narrator, these all are attempts (one could argue failed attempts) at distracting him from a job he dislikes and a life which has ceased to surprise him.
The reason I prefer to tango with the notion that there are "good" and "bad" rituals is the fact that any ritual can be either. The tapes, for example, may be a beautiful way to swap stories, but can also create a sense of entitlement as is a major flaw with other rituals in that category. Take holidays like Christmas (not to single it out, there are many more like it across all religions) for example. Christmas is something to look forward to all year, a time to be with family and be happy. And yet, no matter how much you may like to think otherwise, there is some part (possibly extremely tiny) that is selfish. The expectation to receive presents, cards, or even just a "Merry Christmas" greeting from a passerby is always there. Even at a family reunion there is always an expectation that, after sharing a particularly exciting piece of personal news, you receive a hearty "congratulations" or other form of acknowledgement.
I do not believe that Carver is trying to polarize rituals, instead i think he is trying to make a point about rituals and monotony. The narrator lives a pretty monotonous life. Suddenly, when the Robert comes to visit, everything is different. As someone earlier pointed out, it's unusual for them to have a visitor, let alone a blind man. The narrator is quite thrown off his usual routine. He makes an attempt at small talk (as he would with every other visitor he'd spoken with before) by asking about Robert's trip. "...I wanted to say something else, small-talk, about the scenic ride along the Hudson. How going to New York, you should sit on the right-hand side of the train, and coming from New York, the left-hand side." (Carver 102) His usual arsenal of meaningless conversation topics takes a hit. Not only that, but his perception of blind people is drastically changed. Through all this, the narrator shares his ways of passing time (like drinking, smoking, and watching TV) with Robert. Despite their possibly selfish intentions (for it to be less awkward for the narrator) they do serve to allow the characters to come together. Finally, as Robert offers a new experience to the narrator, any barrier between them is broken down as each has shared in each others' rituals while also breaking some as well. In this way, I see Cathedral as showing how rituals can both add to monotony and break it up.
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) and do not have accurate page numbers so, excuse my citation inaccuracy please.